Page 264 - The Midnight Library

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Her brother laughed as the car pulled up at 33A Bancro Avenue. He

paid, on account of Nora still having no money and no wallet .
Mr Banerjee sat at his window, reading.
Out on the street, Nora saw her brother staring in astonishment down at
his phone.

‘What’s up, Joe?’
He could hardly speak. ‘Langford . . .’
‘Sorr y?’
‘Dr Ewan Langford. I didn’t even know his surname was Langford but

that’s him.’
Nora shrugged. ‘Sibling intuition. Add him. Follow him. DM him.
Whatever you have to do. Well, no unsolicited nude pics. But he’s the one,
I’m telling you. He’s the one.’

‘But how did you know it was him?’
She took her brother by the arm, and knew there was no explanation she
could possibly give. ‘Listen to me, Joe.’ She remembered the anti-philosophy
of Mrs Elm in the Midnight Librar y. ‘You don’t have to understand life. You

just have to live it.’
As her brother headed towards the door of 33A Bancro Avenue, Nora
looked around at all the terraced houses and all the lampposts and trees
under the sky, and she felt her lungs inflate at the wonder of being there,

witnessing it all as if for the first time. Maybe in one of those houses was
another slider, someone on their third or seventeenth or final version of
themselves. She would look out for them.
She looked at number 31.

rough his window Mr Banerjee’s face slowly lit up as he saw Nora safe
and sound. He smiled and mouthed a ‘thank you’, as if simply her act of
living was something he should be grateful for. Tomorrow, she would find
some money and go to the garden centre and buy him a plant for his

flowerbed. Foxgloves, maybe. She was sure he liked foxgloves.
‘No,’ she called back, blowing him a friendly kiss. ‘ ank you, Mr
Banerjee! ank you for ever ything!’
And he smiled broader, and his eyes were full of kindness and concern,

and Nora remembered what it was to care and be cared for. She followed her
brother inside her flat to start tidying up, catching a glimpse of the clusters
of irises in Mr Banerjee’s garden as she went. Flowers she hadn’t appreciated